Over 500 anti-fascist activists and trade unionists marched in Codnor, Derbyshire, last Saturday in opposition to the British National Party (BNP) and its “Red, White and Blue” Nazi hate-fest that took place in the area.

Nearly sixty asylum seekers detained at the Campsfield House detention centre, in Oxfordshire, went on hunger strike last week in protest at the brutal treatment they have suffered and their looming deportations.

Thursday 3 July was no ordinary day for the mainly migrant workers at the contractors that supply cleaning services to London Underground. The workers’ RMT union had called a strike against the cleaners’ pitiful wages and poor conditions, and everyone knew that this would be an important battle.
But for three cleaners who reported to the offices of their GBM Services employer only to find a squad of immigration officers laying in wait for them, it was to be a day of humiliation, rather than protest.

British politicians love playing Winston Churchill. Tory leader David Cameron was at it last week when he flew to Georgia. According to the Guardian, Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili invited him after he compared the situation there to “the appeasement of Hitler”.

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Russian socialist activist and a director of the Institute for Globalisation Studies in Moscow. He spoke to Socialist Worker about the reaction to the Georgian war within Russia, and its implications for the politics in the region and worldwide.

Mark Almond is a lecturer in history at the University of Oxford, and an expert in the politics of the Caucasus region. He was one of the speakers at the Stop the War Coalition’s emergency meeting on the Georgia crisis held in London on Thursday of last week. He spoke to Socialsit Worker.

In the Czech Republic, just as in most European countries, we have been watching television pictures of Georgia’s “brave” president Mikheil Saakashvili “defending his small country against imperial Russia”.

The US and Poland’s leaders have escalated the militarisation of Europe and the tensions between the West and Russia. They signed a preliminary deal on the Polish part of the so-called missile defence “shield” last week.

Ed Saunders of The Fugs spoke to Martin Smith about the music that helped change America
“This is the era of the civil rights, sexual and consciousness expansion revolutions, and those are the banners under which The Fugs are going to present themselves to America.”

“Although it seems heaven sent, we ain’t ready to have a black President… some things will never change”, argued the rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996. Twelve years on it would seem things have changed as White House braces itself for a black occupant. This change has not been lost on Nasir “Nas” Jones, one of rap music’s favorite sons.

The spin from inside New Labour is that the party leadership accepts that it will lose the forthcoming Westminster by-election in Glenrothes to the Scottish National Party (SNP). It would be a shocking indictment of New Labour to lose yet another rock solid Labour seat.

The bosses’ Financial Times newspaper is very clear that “Team GB’s” success in the Chinese Olympics shows “you can, literally, buy gold metals”. Britain’s Chinese haul of medals has come in what the paper terms “elite sports”.

Hammaad Munshi became the youngest person convicted under the Terrorism Act this week. He was under police surveillance from the age of 16 and was found guilty along with two other men of “making a record of information likely to be useful in terrorism”.

George Bush’s plans for a “missile defence shield” have already played a major part in goading Russia and destabilising the Caucasus. Now it could turn Britain into a target in any future nuclear confrontation.